First of all, if your solution requires time-travel, you can write a science-fiction story and perhaps get published, but it’s of no value whatsoever to this thread.
The food bank in my county has a crisis building. Donations are down by at least 25% (as of last month) and demand is up by at least 50% (also as of last month).
It appears that other food banks are suffering a similar problem, but I’m just addressing this one food bank that I know.
You can’t go back in time to fix it. You can’t say, “Well X should have done Y and everything would be fine.”
I want to hear what you think should be done now and going forward to fix a problem like food banks with insufficient food. If your solution is “Let them starve” I want to hear that, too.
Have you tried talking to local religious organizations and schools about a partnership? I’m not talking about a one time thing, but maybe a monthly collection that could be rotated between different groups?
Also some publicity of the problem could help. If the local news did a few stories on it it might help increase awareness and thereby increase donations.
Granted that we can’t go back in time, the first step is still to figure out what went wrong. Even if we can’t fix it in the past, we can fix it now, and keep the problem from getting any worse.
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough information to say what the problem was in your case.
I’m using statistics from my local food bank. But the problem I’m describing is happening to many if not all food banks in the US. The problem is that food banks depend on charitable giving and the charitable giving is drying up.
If charitable giving dries up and charities rely on charitable giving, what is the solution for the things the charities exist to serve? In this particular case, it’s food, so what is the solution for food banks when they don’t have enough money to hand out food?
Lots of political philosophies handwave away problems into “charities will handle it” or “government will handle it” or “not my problem.” I want to know what people think should happen, starting now instead of in the past, to fix the food bank (or any other basic charity) problem of underfunding.
Did that make sense to anyone, or should I just go back to bed?
Caveat Lector had a good suggestion upthread. Talk to all your local churches and schools - ask if they can do a food drive, “bring a tin” days to tie in with sermons on charity or lessons on social problems - a small increase in donated food may help you through the xmas season, if there’s a larger response, you could look at staggering collections through next year.
I know it’s not a complete solution, but it may help a little right now. That might just be the answer, that you stop looking for funding and make the whole thing more direct - you don’t need money to buy food - you need food (and keep the funding requests for running costs only).
Our local supermarkets all have bins by their doors for food to be donated and our Foodbank still has to find other ways of supplementing those bins. I think you mentioned a while ago that your favoured local supermarket wasn’t being supportive so I’m just adding this as insurance in case it was someone else.
Ask any other local businesses if they’ll donate goods or services for raffles. Local entertainers could contribute their time for a fundraising concert. Your council may donate a venue. Ticket price could be a tin (or packet) per person. There could be a series of shows aimed at adults, teens and kids. Could you contact local tutors (music / art/ sport etc) and ask them to add a tin to their fees for one week?
Email two people and ask them to bring a tin to a collection point and pass on the email to two more people etc. This filled a shipping container with books to start up a school in Africa when it was tried here recently.
You’ll need someone who can chase the opportunities and keep making more, you may need to be that person.
Well, it may not be the case that “charitable giving is drying up” - the problem is that people are not giving to the food bank. In other words, perhaps what’s needed is more advertisement and marketing - more press releases, news stories, etc.
I’ve always thought that there should be a way for food banks to tap into the vast amounts of food wasted by restaurants every day in this country due to health codes. But the solution would undoubtably costs millions to implement and be subject to countless lawsuits.
I guess the general answer is to solicit more donations for the food shelf.
If the response is that no one wants to give donations, then that is a piece of information. Apparently, people don’t perceive that giving to the food shelf is worthwhile, or there is no need to do so, or the food shelf isn’t doing a good job at addressing the problems it set out to alleviate.
If the problem is that people literally cannot afford to give, then there is nothing that can be done. I rather doubt that people are so close to the edge in the US that they cannot spare even a little food, so I suppose something else is going on. The task is therefore to identify what that is.
Grocery stores already donate many of their expired or about-to-expire foodstuffs to large programs like Second Harvest.
Around here, that means that the large donations are collected in a different county, then parceled out to the smaller individual food banks. The smaller food banks also accept direct donations of food and money. ETA: Because the smaller food banks get direct donations from individuals, the richer counties tend to have “richer” food banks with more donations.
Restaurant food or other food that isn’t shelf stable would present a huge logistical problem for food banks, though something could possibly be worked out with soup kitchens instead.
The question is theoretical, not practical. In times of plenty, people have money to give, but fewer people need charity. In times of want, more people need charity but people have less to give. The answer is the same as in the time of Joseph, store food for the lean years during the fat years. This is difficult to implement since we don’t know how long the fat and skinny years will last, and food does not keep indefinetly. It would probably be good for food banks to solicit some money which can be easily stored to buy food when times get tough.
One of the things that I’ve been interested for myself is an indoor, bushel tub-size vegetable garden. Perhaps food banks could cultivate small indoor gardens of vegetables to help supplement what they’re given?
Could foodbanks that have space keep chickens for the eggs? A cow or two for milk?
Maybe the answer is small farms, supplemented by donations of breads, canned meats and such. Maybe you could give away fresh veggies in return for other stuff like flour, pasta, bread, etc.
Right, this is a theoretical problem with a very practical expression in food banks.
Since we can’t go back in time, we can’t stock up for this particular lean time, and since the donations aren’t sufficient to cover the demand as it stands, there is no money to stock up for future lean times either.
Historically, people give to food banks during the holidays. This year, that doesn’t seem to be happening.
The one soup kitchen I’ve ever dealt with directly got much of their food from Second Harvest, though admittedly I don’t know the distribution logistics. Are you suggesting that grocery stores donate directly to soup kitchens, or that central distribution orgs like Second Harvest “push out” more of their stock to soup kitchens to save storage space? Or are you just brainstorming?
Maybe I will brainstorm with Mom - it’s been more than 20 years, but she used to run a Salvation Army office that, among other things, had a small soup kitchen and food pantry.
Office shop Christmas parties around here expect participants to bring Food bank donations. Its a cultural thing.
Big box grocery stores around here have vouchers which you can purchase along along the rest of your groceries so the food bank can buy stuff. The store retains the vouchers for the food bank.
Other stores will have a well displayed big box near the exit/entrance for food bank donations.
Not enough? You need publicity and easily accessed drop off centres where food bank collectors can empty.
I’m sure your community cable channel where local advertising is done would be happy to assist with appeals for free.
Schools can be harnessed for emergencies when inventories are scarce like the blood banks do. You can turn things around in a couple of days for an emergency food relief drive, and have several in a school semester if neccessary.
You’ve got to make it easy for people and you got to get in their faces.
Wait, you’ve somehow got the idea that because the food bank in your area has low stocks, that there’s no way to replenish those stocks. Why?
Food banks don’t store up food during good times and distribute food during hard times. There’s no shortage of food in America. The fact is, food banks aren’t huge resource hogs. It’s not like it will take tens of billions of dollars to bail out the nation’s food banks. All it takes is a bit more money. Why do you assume that since food banks are running lean right now that means that they’ll never recover?
There’s no need to go back in time to yesterday to stock up for today. We can stock up for today today. What’s so hard about that? It just takes a bit more money from donors today and tomorrow. The food banks don’t need the money and donations yesterday, they need them today.
They need them today for the demand today. There are insufficient donations for the current demand, let alone for laying in an extra supply for future demand.